Objective music A concept I continually return to Or rather: a reality Because the sound isinescapable, within me Because we arepalintropic beings? What are they? Returning, alwaysrecursive, time created again and again, in its interiorspherical form A hypersphere; of a growing number of dimensionsMemory’s recognitions Near-identity For we arenever alike Or: all-too-alike, in our mental automataBut we transcend The motorics of the fingers moves The motoricsof the soul The selfsame movement Until something breaks out A wingFrom which pair of wings? Birds fly at breakneck speed, in an uproar

New wars Rwanda Yemen San’a’ is attacked with Scud-missilesBloated corpses float in the turbid river from whichrefugees draw water While spring explodes hereAll the flowers, birds The ash tree’s dark violet flowersIn the ravine wood anemones, lesser celandine, and hollow-root, Corydaliscava, rare Fragrant balsam poplars, grown wildFrom the bridge we see a big pike, streaking across the bottom in shallow water Full of algaeOn the pike’s back some kind of thread-shaped growths Parasites?A wild duck squeaks We look for the mourning cloak in the still clearhazel thicket, but it is not there The nuthatch callsIn the evening we drink wine, make love, twicethen we watch an old film, 8 1/2, don’t watch the newsIt doesn’t hold up The circus people can no longer simply move on Who needs it?Stravinsky asked, about the new music The chaffinches are singingI need the music I listen to its unfamiliar sounds There is no repetitionI hear the resonance of war; its complete brutality; its abrogation of valueBut that’s not it Standing wounded before one another we can also open. . .

The raging storm takes fire When the wounds of political silence open up under the skin The whitehell opens All righteousness All pride Allshame At what is on my hands, whatcleaves to me I am publicly thanked But I can’ttake it No one has the right to thank meYes, it’s true, I say, about my having written a poem in 1965about the war in Vietnam That I then wrote several more,took part in the solidarity movement, onward to victoryI add: Those years have left a deep mark on my life I feelI’m not being understood; a smile comes to my lipsEarlier I refused to recite the poem I look atBao Ninh, the author of a realistic novel about the warHe sits absolutely quiet, drinks wine Knows no foreign languagesI myself feel utterly foreign It is my lot to play host toall that is foreign Unconditional hospitality The conditions are the sameI cannot repeat anything But I know that I woulddo the same thing, again, against that war I talk about you,dearest, who had come home in the afternoon and spoken about a 13-year-old Vietnamese girl you met at a school, who saidthere were two things she liked in Sweden: democracy, andthat you were allowed to criticize your teachers I tell this to my friends With official representatives I cannot speak—

For the first time a major reconciliation Perhaps Yesterday Nelson Mandela took an oath as president of South Africa In asimultaneous liberation of Africans and Boers Never Never Neveragain, shall this beautiful land need to experience oppression, orsuffer the shame of being regarded as the scum of the earth, said MandelaBut we do not know The white extremists suddenly seem to be few and marginalizedThe strength, the power of transformation Amandla With the same force aspain But in the moment of liberation as if without resistanceThe light streaming from people’s faces, in lines attheir polling places, with their same human value That strengthBut all power is transformed In the wear, the tear, toward otherattractors Once before I praised a victory; which became bitterThis time it is something else Law Democracy Peaceful means—I know, everything simultaneously carries its opposite As does this reservation

Note:Mandela: The indirect quotation given in the Swedish text has been rendered here. Mandela’s exact words were: "Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world."